New Year, New Kegs

What a fantastic whirlwind the holidays are. SWMBO and I went all over the great state of Texas. Visiting our families in South, North East, West and Central Texas as well as visiting friends in Houston, really put a ton of miles on our vehicles and gave us the opportunity to get some quality time with people we haven’t seen in a while. While all this traveling was amazing it didn’t lend itself to brewing or any beer related activities (save for drinking of course).  

With the New Year here I had a list of three things to accomplish while I was off of work:

1.       Find Kegs

2.       Complete the 4 Keg Setup

3.       Brew a new beer.

Number one sounded easy enough but after 3 weeks of searching and finding 0 (ZERO!) corny kegs in the DFW Metroplex I was beginning to worry. I was finally able to get on a waiting a list at Homebrew HQ. On New Year’s Eve I got the call and picked up 3 used corny kegs!

I swear, the grass froze and that is why its brown.

By scratching off number one I had completed two of my goals from This Post. Now all I needed was to complete #2 from my list to completely take care of the old post. Unfortunately, I found out that the task of expanding was much more difficult and that will require another post. Till then, Prost!

Coming Up Next

After the success of my last brew I decided to take a minute to figure out what my next steps were in regards to the question of "Where do I go from here?".

Obviously #1 on that list was to brew more beer so I placed an order with Austin Homebrew Supply. The order contained a couple random things (hop sacks, etc.), a wort chiller (!), and most importantly supplies for a Rye Pale Ale. I know it is winter now and most people traditionally look for something a bit darker and malty-er to warm yourself up, but what beer selection would be complete without a nice crisp Pale Ale? Amazingly enough I placed this order on a Sunday 12/4, by Tuesday 12/6 it was on my front doorstep. Now that is impressive! Now it looks I will be brewing a Ryen's Pale Ale later this week.

A couple other things that I look forward to completing in the coming weeks to upgrade the kegerator include:

1. Installing a false bottom on the fridge for maximum space utilization. Doing this should let me store 4 kegs in the fridge. 
2. Getting more corny kegs and more taps! Need a place and a way to dispense all that good beer. 
3. Prepping the fridge to dispense from (hopefully) 4 kegs.  This should be fun...

Hopefully I will have a write up of how the RPA Brew Day went later this week. Till then, Prost!